


Birthright

by Ladybug_21



Category: Aquaman (2018)
Genre: And Arthur Purposefully Driving Vulko A Little Bit Crazy, Atlantis Is Not A Democracy and Arthur Doesn't Know How to Handle This Emotionally, Gen, Lots of Yelling About Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-23 20:58:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17690807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybug_21/pseuds/Ladybug_21
Summary: "You don't have a constitution."  Arthur leaned back in his chair with a groan.  "Well, damn it.  Figuring this out is gonna be ten times harder than high school civics."





	Birthright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shiguresflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiguresflower/gifts).



> This is what happens when one of your delightfully wonky friends becomes fixated on the tiny bit of _Aquaman_ that involves the Atlantean CBP, and your subsequent conversations spiral into a million absurd hypos that try to apply real-world U.S. immigration law and constitutionally enshrined citizenship rights to superhero films. I own no rights to _Aquaman_.

"So, how do I kick off this whole 'being King' thing?"

"First and foremost, Your Highness, I would recommend taking your feet off of your desk," sighed Vulko, already resigned to at least a month's worth of intense frustration.

Arthur chuckled and slid his feet off the edge of the desk with a wink.

"You're just doing this to bother me, aren't you," Vulko grumbled.

"Hey."  Arthur pushed himself out of his chair and stood to clap his vizier on the shoulder.  "If there's one thing that I've noticed about Atlantis, it's that people could stand to loosen up _just_ a little bit.  I promise to behave myself in public."

"Thank goodness for that," muttered Vulko.

"But I'm serious," Arthur continued, "what should I be doing?  I assume that there's more to this gig than just standing around with a trident, looking cool and whooping people's asses as necessary.  Is there, like, a textbook that I can read to study up on my duties?"

"A textbook?"

"Yeah.  Preferably one that's better than the textbook my civics teacher used in high school, because I would have flunked that class if my dad hadn't been on a _West Wing_ binge at the time."

"Ah."  Vulko nodded solemnly.  "You mean a document that will explain the structure and functioning of our government."

"I mean, even just a copy of the constitution would be helpful," Arthur added with a shrug as he sat back down.

"The constitution," Vulko repeated blankly.

"Yeah."  Arthur paused.  "You... do have a constitution, right?  Like, a real written one that people can download in PDF format and print?"

Vulko shook his head.

"You don't have a constitution."  Arthur leaned back in his chair with a groan.  "Well, damn it.  Figuring this out is gonna be ten times harder than high school civics."

"I am happy to explain anything that you want and need to know about our government," Vulko offered in a futile attempt to be helpful.  "It may take a while, but I have no doubt that if you apply yourself, all of the protocols and traditions that you must learn will become second nature quite quickly..."

"You really haven't written any of this down?" Arthur interjected, amazed.  "Really?   _None_ of it?!"

"It's  _tradition_ , Arthur," Vulko snapped, recognizing a second too late his own breach of protocol.  "Your Highness.  I apologize."

"Totally okay."

"It's not, but thank you.  The point is, we've never _had_ a King or Queen Regnant before who wasn't born and raised in Atlantis.  No one ever anticipated needing to explain everything from scratch."

"Which is  _exactly_ why you need a written constitution," Arthur argued.  "What if there's some rule from way back when that says that there's an age requirement for becoming King?  Or that only natural born Atlanteans can rule?"

"Of course there's no age requirement," scoffed Vulko.  "We've had monarchs inherent the throne at only a few months old, even if a Regent had to functionally rule until they came of age.  And as for the requirement that a ruler be a natural born Atlantean..."

Arthur's eyebrows twitched upwards as he watched his vizier rack his brain for evidence to the contrary.

"Yup," he concluded, slapping his palms on the desk and then springing to his feet.  "Looks like we've got some research to do."

* * *

"I'm not seeing anything," Mera reported, flipping through the pages of an old ledger and tossing it back onto the shelf with a sigh.  "And we've been through practically everything on the past three floors..."

"It's always the stuff that's squirreled away in the backs of dingy old libraries that screws people over, though," Arthur muttered as he skimmed a page.

Mera exhaled, her arms crossed.  She leaned her head against Arthur's arm.

"Arthur, we've been here for _fourteen hours_ ," she whined.  "When we  _could_ be off doing, I don't know, other things..."

"Hang on, why do you guys even have books?" Arthur asked suddenly.  "I mean, you live underwater and ride around in high-tech ships."

"Well, we didn't  _always_ have high-tech ships," Mera reminded him.  "And we didn't always live underwater."

"Yeah, but I assume that only the aristocracy upwards could access these for a lot of history, given the need to breathe air to come in here?"  Arthur clapped shut the book that he was reading and scowled.  "That's hella classist."

"I guess?"  Mera poked Arthur's bicep.  "Are you getting hungry, too?  Because I'm starving."

"Cool, that'll be the first thing on my kingly agenda," Arthur muttered to himself, sliding his book back onto a shelf.  "We're gonna digitize all of this into a giant underwater public library, and make it accessible to everyone in Atlantis from their home computers, or whatever they have here.  With actual search functions that'll make research a hell of a lot easier."

Mera rolled her eyes and began nudging Arthur between the stacks towards the exit.

They encountered Vulko just outside the royal archives.

"Any luck?" he asked.

"No," Mera scowled.

"Well, I've spent the afternoon reviewing the historical records of every monarch of Atlantis since Atlan himself, and I haven't found anything that suggests that one _has_ to have been born here to become King..."

"Yeah," Arthur cut in, "but all of them  _were_ , weren't they?"

"Admittedly, but I don't see why you need affirmative reassurance that you have a right to..."

"Look," shrugged Arthur, "I really just don't want Orm discovering some loophole in a year or two, and popping back in to try to retake my throne on a technicality."

"You defeated Orm in single combat by trident," Mera reminded him.  "That makes you King, if nothing else does."

"Yeah, but I'd like to be King on some grounds other than having staged a freaking  _coup_ ," Arthur groaned.  "Didn't you guys see  _Black Panther_?  Killmonger was  _not_ supposed to be the hero of that movie, even if he had complicated and arguably justifiable motivations."

"But Arthur," Mera interrupted, "I think that the evidence that you're looking for just doesn't exist.  So can we please stop swimming around in circles, looking for it?"

"Your Highness, I agree with Princess Mera, and I'd add that it would be much more productive for you to worry about actual governance than about your right to govern..."

"Yeah."  Arthur sighed.  "It just really pisses me off that birther conspiracies that question my right to rule Atlantis are going to have an actual basis in  _fact_."

As the ostensible King of Atlantis grumbled his way down the corridor, Mera turned to Vulko, her brow furrowed in confusion.  And Vulko, who also had no idea what Arthur was talking about, simply shrugged and followed the man that he still assumed was his legitimate sovereign.

* * *

"Do I need to be naturalized as a citizen of Atlantis?"

"Arthur, stop."

"No, I'm serious.  I have literally no documentation proving that I'm even a citizen of this country.   _Surely_ you have to at least be a citizen of Atlantis to become the King?"

"Your Highness," sighed Vulko wearily as Mera rolled her eyes, "I can assure you that our immigration system considers everyone born to at least one Atlantean parent an automatic citizen of Atlantis."

"Even if not a natural born citizen."  Arthur drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair.  "Well, that's a step in the right direction, at least.  Can we make sure that Customs and Border Protection know that by now, so they don't try to arrest me or anything embarrassing?"

"Yes, Your Highness," Vulko replied in the voice of a man who fully anticipates being hit by a full-fledged migraine at any moment.

"Well."  Arthur was about to prop his feet back up on his desk again, but one look at Vulko made him reconsider trying the vizier's patience too much more.  "Call me paranoid, but I feel like I should at least make sure that I have a copy of my birth certificate on hand.  Can we send someone up to the surface to ask my dad?"

"I'll go."

Three heads turned as Atlanna entered the room, and Vulko stood and bowed through force of habit.  Atlanna drifted to just behind Mera and put her hand on the Xebelian princess's shoulder, beaming at Arthur.

"I missed the reason, though," she added.  "What do you need to ask your father?"

"Your Highness," Vulko said, turning to Atlanna, "with all due respect, your son is being ridiculous."

"I am not!  You should see some of the political absurdity that's gone down over this sort of thing, where I come from!"

"He is being ridiculous," Mera confirmed in an undertone to Atlanna, who was clearly trying not to grin too broadly.

"I need to get a copy of my birth certificate from Dad, to prove that I'm the son of an Atlantean, and that I'm therefore a legitimate citizen of Atlantis," Arthur explained stubbornly.

"Oh, well, that won't do you any good," Atlanna laughed.

"It won't?"

"Not to prove your Atlantean citizenship," Atlanna clarified.  "It would certainly demonstrate that you're my son, which I somehow doubt anyone in Atlantis would challenge in the first place.  But I didn't put down Atlantis as my place of birth or citizenship on your birth certificate."

"Wait... you didn't?"

"Of course not."  Atlanna shrugged.  "No one working for the American government would have believed me, if I had."

"You committed  _document fraud_?"  Arthur stared at his mother, horrified.  "That is so, _so_ illegal."

"I don't think the United States can prosecute me for it, if that's what concerns you," Atlanna replied drily.  "The last I heard, it's difficult to bring criminal charges against someone who's officially been dead for the past twenty years."

"Hang on, I'm just grappling with the fact that I've built my career around bringing criminals to justice, and now I'm supposed to rule a country fairly and equitably, and  _my own mother_ has just admitted to knowingly committing something that's gotta be at least a federal misdemeanor."  Arthur furrowed his brow.  "Wow.  I've never even thought about the fact that you lived undocumented in the U.S. for, like, three years.  What if you had been caught?  What would you have even _said_ if the feds had tried to deport you?"

"I worried about that for a little while, but fortunately, no one ever questioned my immigration status, and since we never tried to cross any international borders, it wasn't a problem."  Atlanna frowned slightly.  "An officer did stop us once, but he didn't ask to see any identification for me, only for your father."

"But your father's the one who's actually an American citizen."  Mera tilted her head to one side, confused.  "That doesn't make any sense."

"No, actually, knowing America, it totally does," Arthur muttered under his breath.

"Arthur, everyone _knows_ you're my son," Atlanna promised him.  "No one is going to try to claim that you're not an Atlantean or of royal blood, just because it's not recorded the way things are recorded in the States."

"Well, that's good, but I _still_ think that we need to start documenting things better," Arthur insisted.  " _Like a constitution_ , for starters."

"Don't ask," Vulko muttered to Atlanna when she shot him a questioning look, before relenting: "He's having a crisis over whether or not he's allowed to be King, just because the right isn't codified anywhere as extending to Atlanteans born abroad, and there's no historical precedent."

Atlanna smiled as she stepped forward and took a seat next to her son.

"Word has it that you're quite the hero on the surface," she told him.

"I do my best," Arthur said, embarrassed.  "Dad told you that?"

"He's very proud of you.  Although I think you know that he does worry about how dangerous it is for you."

"Yeah, I know, but..."  Arthur shrugged.  "I can't _not_ act when I see bad things happening out there.  You've just gotta help people, you know?  If you can, however you can.  It's the right thing to do."

"And so, if that's how you look at the world, what makes you think that you can't be a good leader?" Atlanna challenged him.  "People love you because you care about them and look out for their well-being.  Those seem like the hallmarks of a true King to me."

"It's not about being a  _good_ King," Arthur objected.  "It's about being a  _legitimate_ King."

"Ah, but the beauty of not having a written constitution is that, as long as you retain the confidence of the people, you get to make the rules, Arthur."  Atlanna winked.  "I know you were raised an American, but you need to start thinking like an Atlantean.  Besides political and popular pushback, there are no checks and balances here."

"And I feel very uncomfortable that there aren't, so maybe that should be changed, too."  Arthur wrinkled his nose.  "How do you even  _know_ about checks and balances?"

"Because, as a head of state, I paid attention when your father explained the structure of the American government to me, once upon a time," Atlanna replied.  "Even if Orm tries to reclaim the throne in the future, under some arcane rule from hundreds of years ago, he won't be able to take your authority away from you, Arthur.  You gained it through single combat, which is a form of legitimate power transfer long recognized by Atlantean tradition.  Besides, your inherent claim to the throne as my first-born son is strong enough that I was once tried for treason and executed because of it.  And, frankly, if the people accept you, the Navy remains loyal to you, and the other kingdoms continue to recognize you as King of Atlantis, then on a practical level, Orm can pose no threat."

"See?" Arthur said to Mera.  "What did I tell you.  It's an autocratic power-grab."

"But a legitimate power-grab, according to our laws and traditions," Atlanna countered.  "And monarchs are by definition autocrats.  You are well within your rights to establish a legislature and independent court system if you want to, Arthur, but until then, you are also well within your rights to exercise absolute and unchallenged power."

Arthur sighed, his eyes turned towards the floor.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," he conceded softly.  "As long as I use that power for good, right?"

"Right," Atlanna agreed quietly.

In the moment of silence that followed, Vulko caught Atlanna's eye and emphatically nodded his thanks.

"Hey."  Arthur turned towards Atlanna.  "Why do I get to be King while you're still alive?"

Atlanna blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"I mean, the Queen of England is, like, ninety, but her grown-up sons are only Princes, and she still gets to be Queen until she dies.  Shouldn't that mean that you're still Queen?"

Mera's eyebrows flew upwards and she mouthed,  _Are you crazy?_  at Arthur, who shrugged in reply.  Atlanna, meanwhile, glanced at Vulko, amused.

"I think he's technically right," Vulko said slowly.  "Orm only became King because we all assumed that you were dead."

"I see."  Atlanna laughed, standing.  "Well, in that case..."

Mera shot Arthur a furious look.

"I hereby abdicate any residual claims to the crown, in favor of the ascendancy of my eldest son Arthur Curry," Atlanna finished.  She turned and placed a hand on Arthur's arm.  "And I'm happy to put that all in writing, if you'd like me to."

"To be fair, you'd be a hell of a lot better at this than me," Arthur admitted.

"I've wanted you to be King of Atlantis since you were born," Atlanna told him.  "I always told your father that you would unite our worlds.  You'll do wonderfully, when you've settled in a bit.  And of course I'm happy to offer any advice that you request, although I hope to spend most of my time on the surface once you've gotten your feet wet, if you'll pardon the expression."

"Well."  Arthur rose to give Atlanna a hug goodbye.  "I won't keep you here any longer, then, if you're raring to go.  Say hi to Dad for me, okay?  And tell him that I'll come visit for a much-needed beer, as soon as I've figured all of this out."

"I will," Atlanna smiled.  "Do you still want me to bring back a copy of your birth certificate?"

"Can't hurt," Arthur shrugged.  "At least if things go downhill here, I'll have everything on hand to go run for President of the U.S. the instant I turn thirty-five."

"He really is being ridiculous," Atlanna said over her shoulder to Mera as she left the room, a stately bounce in her step.

"Wait, Your Highness," Vulko called, following Atlanna out the door, "before you leave, if you could give me some estimate of how long you intend to be away, so that I can arrange the rapprochement state dinner with the Brine Kingdom accordingly...?"

As soon as they were alone, Mera turned and smirked at Arthur.

"Well, I'm glad that  _someone_ around here can talk some sense into you, even when you're being absurd," she teased him.

"Hey," Arthur laughed, "you've proven time and time again that you _like_ my particular brand of absurd.  And at least I've never jumped out of a plane without a parachute."

Mera raised an eyebrow.

"Or, fine, I've never jumped out of a plane without a parachute  _of my own free will_ ," Arthur clarified.

"I didn't _make_ you jump out of that plane," Mera reminded him, shoving him playfully in the chest with one hand.  "You just didn't want to lose me."

"Damn straight, I didn't," Arthur growled, seizing her around the waist, and he kissed her until Vulko cleared his throat politely from the doorway.

"Your Highness," the vizier said as Arthur and Mera sprang apart, mortified.  "Now that you seem comfortable considering yourself the King of Atlantis, we really do have quite a lot to review..."

 _I'll catch you later_ , Mera mouthed at Arthur, winking as she sashayed out the door.  Vulko cleared his throat again pointedly to bring Arthur's focus back to the task at hand.

"You wished to know more about the structure of our government, so I think it's probably best if we start with an overview of..."

"Wait, wait," Arthur interrupted.  "Before we dive into the weeds, can I get a pen and a piece of kelp, or something?  I wanna write all of this down as we go."

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, cursory research indicates that dual citizens need to renounce their non-U.S. citizenship before running for President of the United States — for political reasons, if not for constitutional ones. But I don't feel like Arthur would necessarily know that, hence the reason the factoid ended up in a footnote instead of in dialogue somewhere above.


End file.
